


solving problems

by civillove



Series: plans wrapped in rubber bands [2]
Category: Good Girls (TV)
Genre: F/M, Missing Scene, Protective Rio (Good Girls), reaction fic, soft Rio
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-23
Updated: 2019-04-23
Packaged: 2020-01-24 07:24:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,741
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18566665
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/civillove/pseuds/civillove
Summary: Because somehow the darkness covering her backyard is somehow more inviting than her empty house.“You’re bleeding, ma.” He says suddenly, his eyesight following the hand wrapped around her glass of bourbon.She must be staining the glass.The concern? in his voice is enough to make her grit her teeth. She wants him to leave.“I’m fine.”---2x08 reaction fic where Rio finds Beth at the picnic table instead of Ruby and Annie.





	solving problems

**Author's Note:**

> Hi I just thought about this and couldn't let it go. Thanks to all the awesome Brio writers out there who inspired me to dip my toes into the fandom :)

She sits at the picnic table for who knows how long.

Beth barely remembers coming home to an empty house, dark, so dark. She remembers the silence, however, as she’s stumbling up the stairs to look for her kids, a gnawing sensation that she refuses to acknowledge starting to burry in-between her bones. The silence, she thinks, is what really gets to her.

Her house is always so busy, so _loud,_ with white noise that feels like a wool blanket wrapped around her. Even when she wants a bit of quiet, in fleeting moments after her alarm goes off in the morning, the sound stays. Her kids laughing, Dean making funny cartoon-ish noises to exacerbate the giggling, the news rolling on with the weather for the day, coffee pots gurgling, toys being bumped into on the floor, toasters popping with pop tarts.

Beth rounds the corners into different bedrooms.

_No._

They’re all empty.

Panic slips underneath her ribcage because it feels like Jane all over again, even though she knows deep down that’s not the case. She’s not about to find them all huddling in her closet, playing some sort of trick on her, giggling as they yell ‘surprise mommy!’ and Dean rolling his eyes good naturedly because this wasn’t his idea.

That’s not what this is.

She slips into the kitchen, her feet dragging. A note on the fridge hurriedly taped. She pulls it off and stares at it.

Beth stares at it for a long time until her eyes fill with tears at the corners from keeping them open for so long.

They’re gone.

Dean actually did something brazen for once and fucking _took her kids._ It’s unexpected and she finds herself shocked into silence because…she didn’t expect this. She didn’t realize that Dean was _capable_ of making such a decision.

Deep down she feels as if she should have known though, after all, she didn’t think she was capable of robbing a grocery store or carrying out illegal jobs for gangbangers. So why shouldn’t Dean be capable of this—after all this time?

Her hand crumples the paper between her fingers, hard enough that the action almost stings. She doesn’t remember throwing a glass, or picking pieces up, but there’s little cuts along her life line that _bite_ as she sits at that picnic table.

Minutes pass, or maybe hours, she’s not sure. All she really registers is the burn of bourbon coursing down her throat, a white sweater hanging heavily over her shoulders like grief is sitting on her collarbone and those little cuts. Glass always makes the worse cuts.

She remembers Kenny and Jane breaking her mother’s vase and how the glass had shattered _everywhere._ Beth had to remove glass out of Kenny’s foot with tweezers, little bits wedged in his cut, littering the floor like dust. Even vacuuming sometimes doesn’t get it all.

She’d found odd and end shards hiding under nearby furniture days later.

Soft crunching through the grass gains her attention and she looks up, Rio slowly walking towards her like he’s tentative to her reaction. He’s not afraid, no, that emotion wouldn’t fit on him. Her eyes glaze over his black jeans and long-sleeved button down to match, almost too tight around his throat, like the bird on his neck is trying to fly loose.

He looks good, unfair in a way he always does, and she _hates_ that she feels embarrassment lick at her nerve endings at the idea of how her face is splotchy and red from the alcohol and crying.

“What are you doing here?”

Rio pauses right in front of her, sticking his hands in his pockets, “House is dark. Thought it was odd for this time a night.”

She bites her tongue on saying something stupid because she already knows that he keeps an eye on her, that he knows her schedule despite the fact that it digs under her skin and exposes her veins. That’s how he always ends up right there, appearing out of nowhere when she least expects it to say shit about her rotating rotten egg situation, Kenny’s swimming or how he’s going to teach her.

Beth feels a laugh that doesn’t belong surge up her throat but she doesn’t let it loose; instead it seems to choke the words on her tongue. She takes another sip of her drink. ‘House is dark’; the statement is almost laughable because that’s why she’s outside.

Because somehow the darkness covering her backyard is somehow more inviting than her empty house.

“You’re bleeding, ma.” He says suddenly, his eyesight following the hand wrapped around her glass of bourbon.

She must be staining the glass.

The concern? in his voice is enough to make her grit her teeth. She wants him to leave.

“I’m fine.”

He huffs out a noise, his eyes rolling to the sky and she hates that it makes her feel like some sort of petulant child. Rio takes a step towards her, patient even though his jaw is working in a way that tells her he’s borderline frustrated. He holds his hand out and waits, doesn’t press her.

“Let me see.”

Beth squeezes her glass tighter. “You shouldn’t be here.”

Rio barks out a sudden laugh as he lets his hand fall, his tone tinged at the edges with something cruel, irritation breaking through that calm indifference he tries to wear around her.

“Oh I’m sorry, you got a dinner party I don’t know about? Am I interrupting something important?”

Beth has never wanted to throw her bourbon at him more than right now, her fingers squeezing again like she’s considering it. She swears she hears glass splinter, a sharp breath leaving her lips because the cuts on her hand are biting with pain under the pressure. Blood rolls between her finger tips and she watches his eyes, trailing the action and suddenly he has to look away.

Odd.

He lets out a slow breath, intent on trying again. Rio kneels in front of her and she almost pushes him, goes to do it, but he catches her wrist between his fingers. He gives her a look, almost amused, his lips pursing into an unfair pout. His thumb traces the tree of veins on her wrist before his other hand removes the bourbon glass and sets it aside.

“Come on, let me take care of this.”

“Like you were going to take care of my other problem?” She can’t help the venom leaking into her voice; she’s upset and a little drunk and she hates how Rio always seems to show up when she needs something the most.

When she feels like there’s a hole punched through her life that he fills too perfectly.

That he always looks so good and smells like cologne and clean laundry. That he’s incredibly too tactile and that his touch seeps deep into her pores; whether his hand is squeezing hers, brushing along her forehead or shoulder. Or his lips against her neck.

She squeezes her eyes shut because _no._ She’s not going there.

Rio’s jaw is working again but he seems too preoccupied by opening up her hand, trying to get a decent look in the night because he knows better than to try and take her inside.

“Well with all due respect,” He says after a moment, looking up at her. “You didn’t give me much of a head start on that, darlin’, before you decided to fuck it up all on your own.”

Beth feels that same heated anger pooling in her gut that made her throw a glass in the first place, after crumpling up that stupid note on her fridge from Dean. She turns her hand in his and squeezes his fingers.

There’s blood on his skin now but Rio’s face is impassive.

“I did what I had to.”

Rio scoffs but at least he doesn’t outright laugh at her, “When I say I’ll take care of somethin', I mean it.”

She squeezes his hand until she’s too tired to keep it up and feels her fingers go limp; what’s the point in trying? She’s somehow always fighting a losing battle. Rio stands and licks his lips, glances past her at the patio doors that lead inside to the kitchen.

He puts his hands on his knees as he leans down to look at her, waits until her gaze meets his own.

“You gonna hit me if I help you inside?” There’s a tinge of a smile to his lips, amusement dancing there.

She wants to smile back, she sees herself doing it in her mind’s eye but can’t pull out of that black cloud that seems to hang heavily over her, that whispers in her ears _not enough_ to get her body to follow through.

“No. I think I’m done with that.”

He smirks and nods his head, considers her for a moment before wrapping an arm around her waist. Beth allows him to pull her up from the bench, walking her inside and sitting her at the kitchen counter. She doesn’t remember him grabbing her glass but he slides it across the counter, decorated with blood on the outside just like the palm of his one hand.

But he doesn’t seem to mind.

He unscrews the bourbon and flips the overhead light on, topping off her glass.

“First aid.”

It’s not a question and she gestures under the sink. Beth looks at her hand, marred with tiny and angry red lines that sting like paper cuts. She wants to tell him it’s not a big deal, that he doesn’t need to baby her but there’s something about his expression that tells her it’d cause an argument to try and tell him otherwise.

She sniffles and takes another sip from her glass, the taste heady and thick in her mouth, settling hotly in her belly as Rio opens up the kit and starts digging through it for cotton balls.

“What if someone took your boy?” She asks suddenly, the words tumbling out of her mouth like that vase falling to the floor that her kids knocked over.

Rio pauses but doesn’t look up at her before he fixes her with a look; it’s a dangerous, wild look. Like an injured animal being backed into a corner, the same white-hot anger she’s seen before at the car dealership when he was using a crowbar to break windows.

An unwanted shiver wracks down her spine.

“I’d like to see someone try.” He says after a moment and takes her hand, this time without asking.

Beth winces as he splays her palm open, his other hand working quick with a few cotton balls before pressing hard to stop the bleeding. The reaction is instant and a soft noise leaves her lips as she tries to pull her hand back, but he won’t let her.

His dark eyes meet hers, “You should know better, mami, then to let wounds fester like this.”

She swallows and Rio eases up the pressure, moving to open alcohol wipes with his teeth. Beth knows they’re not talking about her hand…but what had Rio expected her to do? Despite everything Dean’s done to her, he was still the father of her children.

_Children that he’s taken from you._

Beth winces and her hand jerks back again, Rio’s face softening a moment as he runs his thumb over hers. “Oh right, this is going to sting.” He says but his voice isn’t apologetic. He continues to clean out her cuts and she takes another sip from the glass on the counter.

It’s quiet for a few moments and it’s maddening—she tries to focus on anything; the hum of the refrigerator, a dog barking down the street, a neighbor locking their car, Rio’s even breathing. Anything.

“I can’t take care of problems like you do.” Beth says suddenly.

Rio looks up at her before giving his attention back to her hand, applying Neosporin where it’s necessary. “Would be a lot easier if you did.”

Now it’s her turn to scoff, “I can barely shoot straight.” Her aim isn’t terrible but it isn’t great. He’s taught her how to take apart a gun, how to shoot, but a gun still feels foreign in her hands. Too heavy. Too metallic.

He closes the first aid kit, a patient breath of air exhaling from his nose. “You’ll learn.”

“I can’t kill someone.” Beth rephrases, because that’s what he’s looking for, right? That’s what he wants from her? To open up that dark chapter and not be able to close it?

He holds her gaze, both of his hands cupping her injured one like a small bird. “You’ll learn.” He repeats.

And no, she doesn’t think so. She doesn’t think she’ll ever learn to handle situations like _that._ Even though Dean’s hurt her, on top of everything, after the constant pain that they’ve been through together she doesn’t think she’d be able to shoot him.

She can’t think of a moment where she’d be pushed to do that.

Beth watches Rio, her eyes traveling over his face; the soft scruff along his jawline, the even and calm breaths that draw into his lungs and out, the way he pulls his lower lip between his teeth as _he_ watches _her._

But then again; maybe he knows her in a way that she doesn’t know herself.

She opens up her mouth but no words come out and once again they’re choked in her throat; she doesn’t know what to say to him. There’s a warm haze wrapping around her brain from the alcohol and from his touch and once again the house is _so fucking quiet._

A strangled noise leaves her lips as she says the only thing she can: “He took my kids.”

Rio’s eyebrows draw together and he leans up off the counter to walk around it. His hands never stop touching hers, even when he moves to stand right in front of her, close—too _close._ Just like the bathroom, just like the little dance they always do. Always in one another’s space, waiting for the other to react.

His hand lets hers go to trail along her cheek, brushing her hair off her forehead. His pinky trails down the side of her face before his thumb wipes tear tracks away that she didn’t know were there.

There’s another pained noise that she doesn’t want to claim as her own because it sounds so _weak,_ even to her own ears. Part of her knows she has nothing to prove and yet another part of her wants to do just that: she wants to prove it to her family, her friends, to _Rio_ that she can do this. That she can be the boss bitch that she tries to embrace.

“Shh,” Rio whispers, seems to sense the ongoing conversation muddling her head and leans down to press the softest of kisses along her hairline. He hovers there for a moment, his breath hot against her forehead.

Beth wants so desperately to touch him, to reach and gather the fabric of his shirt between her fingers, to ground herself, to _bury_ herself in him. But she can’t go there.

Not tonight.

“It may not feel like it,” He says against her skin in that almost _heavy_ whisper that his voice does sometimes that makes her toes want to curl, “But you’re going to figure this out.”

She sniffles as his body leans back from hers, his hand still on her cheek.

“You’ll figure out a way to handle this because you always do, Elizabeth.”

She hates that he does that, that he always seems to know exactly what she needs to hear and when she needs to hear it. Regardless if he’s comforting her or scolding her for being reckless or praising something she’s done or moaning into her neck as she reaches her climax—he knows; Rio reads her like an open book, annotates her chapters, lives in her pages.

And Beth believes him. She holds his gaze and nods softly, that black fog starting to dissipate around her.

A smile tugs the edges of his mouth, his hand falling from her face before taking her glass and drinking the rest of her bourbon.

“And if you find that you can’t…I’ll take care of it for you.”

His eyes hold a quiet conversation, a promise, and she hates how comforting that feels.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for reading and leaving a comment if you did! Or for the kudos :) feel free to drop me brio requests over at my tumblr http://blainesebastian.tumblr.com/ask


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